Mr. Philip Kermode:

The way our structure operates is that I report to the Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud, Algirdas Šemeta, on tax policy issues and legislation. Joaquín Almunia is responsible for the competition department. As one could expect, these competition files are dealt with under conditions of great confidentiality. The actual facts of the individual cases are left to the competition personnel. We are obviously aware of this particular issue and it has been well-known since the summer of last year that our competition authorities were looking at this issue in general, namely the question of tax rulings. They seem to have tied themselves down into the position where they see potential problems with this transfer pricing issue. These are problems, however, that are the subject of a formal investigation which is a first formal step in the exercise.